Lucius Pax, Anne-Marie Vismans-Rijssenbeek, Petra Knötschke; Kunsthaus Knötschke, The Hague

Anne-Marie Vismans-Rijssenbeek

There are developing more small scale art spaces in The Hague these days, varying from shop windows and tiny galleries to living room pop-up exhibitions like this one in Petra Knötschke’s house.

Anne-Marie Vismans-Rijssenbeek, Lucius Pax

Anne-Marie Vismans-Rijssenbeek

Anne-Marie Vismans-Rijssenbeek, Lucius Pax

Three artists are exhibiting in the two storeys of the house: Petra Knötschke herself, who shows objects, Anne-Marie Vismans-Rijssenbeek with ceramic vases and Lucius Pax, paintings.

Petra Knötschke

Petra Knötschke

Lucius Pax

Anne-Marie Vismans-Rijssenbeek

Knötschke’s objects, made of wood, metal and other materials, look like un-mechanical mechanisms, improvisations that live by themselves.

Lucius Pax

Lucius Pax

Lucius Pax

Vismans’ vases may appear like ‘real’ vases but they may also develop into almost corporeal objects, both opened and closed.

Lucius Pax

Lucius Pax, Petra Knötschke

Petra Knötschke, Anne-Marie Vismans-Rijssenbeek

Anne-Marie Vismans-Rijssenbeek

Lucius Pax, always painting life as a thriller movie, shows some works based on German ‘Krimis’ (criminal tv-series) and German erotic movies.

Anne-Marie Vismans-Rijssenbeek, Lucius Pax

Anne-Marie Vismans-Rijssenbeek

Lucius Pax

Petra Knötschke

The whole show is well-arranged and is only open this weekend (23-24 June).

Lucius Pax

[Click on the pictures to enlarge]

© Villa Next Door 2018

Content of all photographs courtesy to the artists.

Bertus Pieters

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Lula Valletta, Purgatorio; Hok gallery, The Hague

Hok Gallery (hok is Dutch for cage) is the newest and – with just eleven square metres walking space – also the smallest gallery in The Hague.

It opened its doors this month, and in bimonthly exhibitions it tries to connect with the underground pop culture.

As such – tiny as it is – it could become an interesting and again diversifying addition to art life in The Hague.

Its first exhibition shows collages by Lula Valletta.

In these collages, many of them based on the famous Ghent Altarpiece, she seems to hark back to Dada and German art of the Interwar period.

The rediscovery of the less “stable” art movements of the 20^th century seems to become more prominent in European art these day.

[Click on the pictures to enlarge]

© Villa Next Door 2018

Content of all photographs courtesy to Lula Valletta and Hok Gallery, Den Haag

Bertus Pieters

Wayne Thiebaud; Museum Voorlinden, Wassenaar

I went to Museum Voorlinden to write a review about the present Wayne Thiebaud retrospective for Villa La Repubblica. Click here to read the review (in Dutch).

As I have written quite extensively about the show in VLR, I leave you here with some pictures of details that struck me.

[Click on the pictures to enlarge]

© Villa Next Door 2018

Content of all photographs courtesy to Wayne Thiebaud, the owners of the works and Museum Voorlinden, Wassenaar.

Bertus Pieters

Enclosed Volume, works by Geert Baas, Niko de Wit and Yumiko Yoneda; Ramakers Galerie, The Hague

Yumiko Yoneda

To make a statement about volume, the sensuality of its surface, the bulkiness of its mass, the ambiguity of its content and inclusively a lot more, you don’t need a hundred artists, you only need three very good ones.

Yumiko Yoneda

Yumiko Yoneda

Yumiko Yoneda

Yumiko Yoneda

Yumiko Yoneda

That much is clear from the present show of recent and new works by Geert Baas (1955), Niko de Wit (1948) and Yumiko Yoneda (1965) at Galerie Ramakers.

Yumiko Yoneda

Yumiko Yoneda

Niko de Wit

Geert Baas

Niko de Wit

Baas, De Wit and Yoneda are very different artists but their works potentially intensify each other.

Niko de Wit

Niko de Wit

Geert Baas

Geert Baas

Geert Baas

All three seem to aim at a certain perfection of thought.

Geert Baas

Niko de Wit

Niko de Wit

Niko de Wit

Niko de Wit

Even in the tongue in cheek looking objects by Baas it is their aesthetic perfection that puzzles most.

Niko de Wit

Niko de Wit

Yumiko Yoneda

Yumiko Yoneda

Yumiko Yoneda

There is of course a remarkable discrepancy between the angularity of De Wit’s works and the soft curviness of Yoneda’s objects.

Geert Baas

Yumiko Yoneda

Yumiko Yoneda

Yumiko Yoneda

Geert Baas

However their differences evolve into a dialogue in this wonderful ménage a trois.

Geert Baas

Geert Baas

Geert Baas

Geert Baas

Geert Baas

For any group exhibition you need dialogue and space, which in this case becomes a statement of aesthetics..

Niko de Wit

Niko de Wit

Niko de Wit

Niko de Wit

Geert Baas

This is an exhibition to enjoy and wonder, and one which I highly recommend.

Geert Baas

[Click on the pictures to enlarge]

© Villa Next Door 2018

Content of all photographs courtesy to the artists and to Ramakers Galerie, Den Haag

Bertus Pieters

Pieter Paul Pothoven, facade suspended; Dürst Britt & Mayhew, The Hague

I visited Dürst Britt & Mayhew to write a review for Villa La Repubblica about Pieter Paul Pothoven’s installation facade suspended. Click here to read the review (in Dutch)

Pothoven (1981) realised an installation that deals with the activist group RaRa (Revolutionary Anti-Racism Action; “rara” being a Dutch expression for “you guess”).

In the second half of the 1980s they committed arson attacks against Dutch companies who invested in South Africa and who were as such seen as supporters of the apartheid regime which was still waging its violent rule.

Although damage cost millions of Dutch guilders, there were no victims.

Pothoven focuses on the shop front of the house which was raided by Dutch police in 1988 in which they hoped to find the nerve centre of RaRa and tons of proof.

To no avail and RaRa is still a kind of a mystery.

As I have written quite extensively on Villa La Repubblica I leave you here with some impressions, but do go and take a look yourself!

[Click on the pictures to enlarge]

© Villa Next Door 2018

Content of all pictures courtesy to Pieter Paul Pothoven and Dürst Britt & Mayhew, Den Haag

Bertus Pieters

Martin Gabriel, non beton place; The Balcony, The Hague

Sometimes artists need just little space to show their work.

A pop up exhibition space like a shop window can be enough; especially so for multi-disciplinary artist Martin Gabriel (1991) who is occupied with space, even creating it where it is not.

At the moment The Balcony is a shop window at 14 Herenstraat which has an exhibition programme and Gabriel is showing his installation non beton place there.

Reflection and extension play an important role in the work.

It might seem that with a camera (or without one for that matter) the window itself is an obstacle, but on the other hand the reflections in the shop window bring even more space into the composition.

[Click on the pictures to enlarge]

Villa Next Door 2018

Content of all photographs courtesy to Martin Gabriel and The Balcony, Den Haag

Bertus Pieters

Jean Brusselmans; Gemeentemuseum, The Hague

Jean Brusselmans (1883-1953) is undeservedly not a household name.

This is probably because he was outstripped by colleagues of his generation as Brusselmans’s personal style took quite a long time to evolve.

The present exhibition at the Gemeentemuseum shows works from the 1930s and 1940s, his most prolific and characteristic period.

Although his experiments and endeavours weren’t always successful, as the exhibition shows, they also brought him to making some nearly immaculate masterpieces.

In every new painting he tries to find a balance in form, colour and mass in his subjects, resulting in his best works in a fine lyricism or a distinguished monumentality.

Whether his subjects are joyful or sorrowful, Brusselmans always avoids sentimentality and overt expressiveness.

Pain, love and joy to him were clearly never a narrative but sentiments that should be worn with human dignity, without decorum but with style, not something to move the viewer to tears but to let him/her discover the glance of them.

For any lover of painting there are a lot of wonderful and fascinating works on show.

Works where you can see Brusselmans trying how to decide about colours and shapes,  sometimes painting over original details but then  making them visible again.

You see him deciding to leave certain parts sketchy or just open, next to fully painted parts. Details become decorations and decorations become expression.

[Click on the pictures to enlarge]

© Villa Next Door 2018

Content of all pictures courtesy to all owners and Gemeentemuseum, Den Haag

Bertus Pieters

Andrea Freckmann, Commedia, Get On Stage!; Galerie Maurits van de Laar, The Hague

Andrea Freckmann (1970) currently has a solo show at Galerie Maurits van de Laar.

It is rare for an artist to have a solo exhibition at Van de Laar’s gallery, but the subject clearly needs it and, what’s more, Freckmann’s work is worth it.

Freckmann clearly is both a painter and a narrator, though her stories don’t seem to have a beginning or an end.

As such they resemble the commedia dell’arte by which this show is inspired.

The figures of the commedia dell’arte have evolved in a tradition of about two centuries with characters like Pierrot, Arlecchino or Colombina who became part of West European culture.

As such they always played the hopes, pitfalls, sentiments and especially the morals of daily life as a caricature, masked and unmasked.

Freckmann adds her own figures and objects to the stories.

There is the ever-present silent dog, the sloppily feathered blackcap, a vase, a timber framed house or even the odd handsome prince on a white horse.

The great thing about Freckmann’s works is that she doesn’t just paint scenes, but that her painting, both technically and compositionally, becomes part of the narrative, or the other way round..

[Click on the pictures to enlarge]

© Villa Next Door 2018

Content of all photographs courtesy to Andrea Freckmann and Galerie Maurits van de Laar, Den Haag

Bertus Pieters